Bad Day at Woodbrook

Motorists who regularly transit Charles Street from Bellona Avenue in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County to Lake Avenue have been subjected to what seems like forever construction work on the busy route that links the county with the city.

For years, a sliver of railroad track bisected the street between a gas station and a convenience store, until it was paved over a few years ago and removed the tracks from view.

Those tracks were long venerated by fans of the old Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad — the “Ma & Pa” — a 77.2 mile single track line with passing sidings that wandered across the Maryland countryside to its final terminal in York, Pennsylvania.

Basically an agrarian operation, the Ma & Pa did host several passenger trains a day that called at Towson, Bel Air, Street, Delta and other villages and other stations in its leisurely wanderings which never went above 20 mph.

There was a saying around Baltimore that it was 40 miles to York by Pennsylvania Railroad, part of which today is home to light rail, and nearly double that by the Ma & Pa, which really was never a serious competitor of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad.

On May 22, 1920, a warm Saturday afternoon, a half-mile south of the Charles Street crossing along the back edge of the Elkridge Club golf course, a freight and passenger train collided head-on, leaving two trainmen dead.

The freight train, No. 32, was the second section of a train that had left York heading southbound to Baltimore earlier that afternoon.

It had two steam locomotives, one on the front end and the other in the center of the train of nine cars and a caboose.

Charles D. Thompson, who lived at 1927 E. Lafayette Ave., in Baltimore, was the engineer on the mid-train or second engine.

Just after passing Towson, Thompson’s engine suffered a mechanical failure and the train was split, with the first section continuing on to Baltimore.

Thompson, who survived, told The Sun that he had expected the first section to wait at the next signal, but instead it continued on its way toward the city.

A passenger train with two baggage cars and three coaches, No. 11, departed Baltimore at 5:30 p.m. with engineer John William Blaney, who lived in Delta, at the throttle.

W.O. Myers, who was the conductor on the northbound No. 11 passenger train for York, told The Sun he witnessed the freight train pull into the Oak Street station, in Baltimore, before his train made its departure.

He was under the impression that it was the entire freight train, but had not been informed to expect the second section was following.

T. M. Cushing, whose Victorian house still stands in Woodbrook, was a correspondent for The Sun, and in 1952 wrote an account of the wreck for the old Sunday Sun Magazine.

“I was seated at my typewriter in the living room of our home, a distance of two city blocks from Woodbrook station, Baltimore County,” he wrote.

“Quite casually I heard the distant four-blast whistle of passenger train No. 11 northbound, just below the Belvedere Avenue grade crossing, about a mile and a half away,” he recalled in his piece. “To me that whistle served to indicate the time of day (subject, of course, to check one’s watch); so, for a few moments, I gave it no further thought, but merely continued my work.”

The clock was advancing to 5:45 p.m.

Cushing added that at the Bellona Avenue overpass, near the site of today’s Armagh Village community, “southbound trains sounded their whistles when approaching Woodbrook station at the Charles Street crossing.”

Cushing could hear the northound passenger train working hard as it chugged past the Tuxedo-Evergreen telephone exchange building (still extant) on what is now Northern Parkway and the entrance to Bryn Mawr School.

A few moments later, and the train would be blowing for Lake Avenue and the Homeland station (now a private residence).

Thompson’s freight train was passing Woodbrook station. Since the passenger train had topped the grade, its engineer opened the throttle as it proceeded along the western edge of the Elkridge Club and into a blind curve.

“Good Lord!” recalled Cushing. ‘They’re going to meet on that sharp curve.”

Cushing heard the collision as the two engines plowe into one another accompanied by the awful sound of grinding steel upon grinding steel as cars telescoped.

“The first two cars of the freight train, containing cattle, killed many of the animals, while some of the fortunate wandered the Elkridge Club grounds.

Blaney, the No. 11’s engineer, was killed instantly buried underneath the wreckage, scalded to death by escaping steam.

Thompson, the engineer of the freight, jumped off seconds before the trains collided.

Cushing grabbed the telephone and asked the operator to summon help. He then called The Sun’s city desk and asked that a reporter and photographer be sent to the scene.

The Towson Volunteer Fire Co. soon arrived on the scene as passers-by combed the horrible scene.  

While there were no casualties among passengers, some were severely shaken up.

Cushing raced to the scene and was shocked to see Blaney, his “favorite childhood engineer, dead on the cab floor buried under coal and mangled steel.

Luther Peyton, the fireman on the freight, who was barely alive, wasn’t so lucky. His foot was pinned between the engine and tender.

Drs. J.M.T. Finney and William Fisher, two noted Baltimore surgeons, were thought to be attending a baseball game between Gilman School and the freshman team from Princeton.

A call was quickly made to Gilman who told that the two men had returned home to Ruxton. When Fisher heard the  news, he raced to pick up Finney who drove to the wreck.

Realizing it was impossible to extract Peyton, the two men made the decision to operate in the cab.

The only surgical tools that were available were Dr. Finney’s pen knife, a saw they located in one of the coaches, morphine and chloroform.

Assisted by Fisher, it took Finney more than an hour to amputate Peyton’s leg above the knee.

He was taken to Union Protestant Infirmary, now Union Memorial Hospital, where he later died.

A month later, Thomas D. Hughes, the brakeman on the first section of the freight train, was blamed for the crash by the coroner’s jury convened at the Northwestern Police Station.

The jury found that had Hughes notified the engineer of the passenger train that another section was following, the accidents would not have occurred, The Sun reported.

In his testimony, Hughes said he had given Blaney the “high sign” that signified another section was following.

The other contributing factor was the railroad did not have an automatic block signaling system in place, and operated by train order and telegraph, and if they had, the wreck could have been avoided.